Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 1Architectural systems and primary elements (a + b)The first level is an analysis of embedded functional characteristics related tospatial organization of architectural systems as environmental tool-kits forsocial life. Choay describes how architectural systems contain both a systemof minor basic elements and related semantically weighted elements. Sheuses Freiburg as an illustration of a typical 217 European medieval city: Theminor basic elements of the medieval city were the streets and the urbanhouses and their system of limited variations, or limited heterogeneity in howthey are spatially organized. The semantically weighted elements of thearchitecture of medieval Freiburg are, according to Choay, the urban wall, thechurch and the castle – which are related to power-relations in the medievalcity. Together, the spatial organization of the minor elements and theirrelation to the semantically weighted elements, form an environmental toolkit,architecturally specialized to serve the socio-spatial logic of the medievalrhythms of everyday life.The first step of my analysis will therefore be to identify the socio-spatialcharacteristics of such tool-kits in the three study areas: first by relating theinitial design of environmental tool kits to the societal conditions thatproduced them, secondly by investigating patterns in later modifications ofthese architectural systems.a) Typological analysis of architectural systems as environmental tool-kitsBuilding-typologies and environmental types represent recognizablearchitectural sets of solutions to recognizable sets of socio-spatial tasks: theyhave a name, and their name refers both to the spatial logic manifested in thearchitecture, in addition to the range of practices they are designed toaccommodate. The type refers to a morphological system – a system offorms: both social and architectural forms. The relationship between the typeas architectural form and the type as tool for social purposes may be explicit,but usually it’s not. Typological variation – like for instance geographical andhistorical variation in the production of environmental types – can be relatedto variations in rhythms of everyday life.As a background for my own effort to accomplish an empirical typologicalanalysis of architectural systems, I will in the following elaborate a bit furtheron some historical-theoretical insights that have influenced mymethodological choices.Panerai et al. (1999) distinguish between two different types: implicithistorical types and explicit (plan) types:217 It should be possible, as I see it, to identify geographical variations of Choay’s scheme related to variationsin power relations between the Church, the feudal system, and the urban society.113